American Buddha Bulletin Board

Back in the day, the press had covered Dr. Elon’s lifestyle choices as a billionaire’s idiosyncrasies, unworthy of deep reflection on his real motivation. Given his gossip-worthy penchant for having children through IVF and surrogate mothers, journalistic curiosity about his family lives had been ...

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Cast in Irony

When Bush the First spoke the words, “New World Order,” he birthed a thousand conspiracy theories that nourish a vast, expanding fan base of believers. Trump coined “Liberation Day,” and given its extraordinary popularity as meme fodder , it may well show ...

If You Would Have Peace

If you've read very much of my stuff, especially The Sex.Com Chronicles , you know I'm a big fan of the view that life "is a ground of endless contention." And while my litigation philosophy has shifted in the last twenty years, I remain partial to the belief that si vis ...

Legacy of the Torturer General
Failed states and unlawful combatants. Two concepts that Torturer General Alberto Gonzales used to justify sending people to Gitmo who had the temerity to take up arms against U.S. soldiers who invaded their state, failing though it might have been. Gonzales thought ...

The Score

Getting a lama to teach us Dharma settled some issues for us. Tara and I had been to India in search of enlightenment, travelling overland from Istanbul, through Tehran, Kabul, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Amritsar, and Jammu, to finally end up in Varanasi, land of holy men, decaying temples, and ...

The Rainbow Star Ngondro Retreat

Tashi Choling temple sits in the foothills of Mt. Ashland on the south slope of the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon, from whence the hills just keep sloping south, all the way to the banks of the Klamath River fifteen miles away, and on beyond, all the way ...

A First Year's Doubts Resolved

Rinpoche’s first visit to Ashland was pretty brief – the night after we first met him at the college, he appeared at Shandor and Gaea’s consciousness center on East Main, called “Gathering Together,” across the street from the cemetery, next door to an old church ...